The Space Between My Head and My Body (Review)

Playwright Catie O’Keefe has been a factor on the
Cincinnati Theatre scene for several years, working with New Edgecliff
Theatre and now her own group, Shark Eat Muffin Theatre Company. Her
play Darker was presented during the 2011 Fringe; she’s back for the
2013 Fringe with The Space Between My Head and My Body, a
non-linear piece about people whose lives intersect on an airplane
flight. It’s presented in the third-floor studio space at Elementz (1100
Race St.).

The script is a series of vignettes (the show is 60
minutes in length) that focus on an engaged couple (Mindy Heithaus and
Dan Maloney), on Lois (Katey Blood ), age 16 and pregnant with twins
and subsequently with her offspring as teens and young adults (Rhys
Boatwright and Lauren Showen). Several of the actors, male and female,
also portray a mechanically vapid flight attendant.

The characters follow “airplane etiquette,” we learn: “You
can always converse with someone on a plane.” But their interactions
are awash in anxiety. The engaged couple’s seats are separated. Lois is
flying to see the boy who’s the father of the children she’s carrying;
she has an odd conversation with the engaged man.

The twins —
subsequently young adults — have an uncomfortable relationship because
the boy is drawn to wearing women’s clothes. The scenes are
non-sequential, and their progress accumulates meaning as we piece
together how these characters and their conversations relate to one
another. Ultimately they all feel like lost travelers.

It also becomes apparent that they exist in some removed
and distant space — an airplane cabin beyond life, perhaps? Each
character dons a blank white mask that suggests a departure, a draining
of emotion, perhaps even a tragedy. Little is specifically indicated,
but each character seems adrift, trying to connect but failing.

I wish that director Laura Boggs had paced the piece with a
little more variety and more briskness between scenes. A monotony
resulted from the repeated sequence of a scene, a blackout, actors
moving off, others moving on. Nevertheless, Heithaus is especially
vulnerable as a sweet Southern gal (in a white dress printed with red
cherries, bright red shoes and a red flower — in her red hair); Maloney
is her caring, solicitous fiancé, and when we see him alone and lost,
his fear is palpable. Katey Blood plays Lois as a nervous pregnant teen and
subsequently as the pragmatic mother of the sparring twins (Mark and Megan).

O’Keefe’s script is poetic, thoughtful and evocative. The
cleverly designed program (resembling the safety information brochure
found in the seatback pocket when you travel by air) suggests “somewhere
between departure and arrival, you can be anyone.” Or, perhaps, no one.